Our bee adventures

Bees battle ‘Beast from the East’!

Stuart and I have been regularly checking the hives throughout winter and adding fondant when required. As of last week, all eleven hives were warm and had activity.

With the Beast from the East doing it’s worst, Joe and I decided to walk through the Gosford Estate to see how the bees were coping.

The walk was beautiful and we emerged at the bees to find the road had been cleared but that the entrance to the apiary was pilled high with the removed snow. Time to climb!

Having climbed the snow mountain we then found ourselves in a rather deep snow drift with great hilarity. As I sunk deeper, Joe shouted “spread your body weight, crawl like a polar bear!”

Finally arriving at the hives we saw that all the entrances were partially obstructed with snow, which we removed. We then discovered that in three of the hives the wind had pushed the entrance blocks back about 2cm and the gap behind the mouse guard was full of snow. We removed the mouse guard, scooped out the snow, repositioned the entrance block and fixed the mouse guard back on. Afterwards I wondered if, by being blocked with snow, this was in fact making a natural draft excluder and we’d just allowed the Beast from the East to blast the entrances again. However, it’s not good to have something wet and damp in the hives and the entrance blocks are supposed to be the draft excluders so I’m hoping we’ve done the right thing!

There was unfortunately one hive I was very concerned about. The Poly hive doesn’t have an entrance block and I don’t know why I didn’t think to stuff it with grass, but I didn’t! When we checked it, not only was the beginning of the entrance full of snow but the whole bottom of the hive was full of snow, touching the bottom of the frames inside. I scooped out the snow and thought the hive must be a goner but, when I shone my touch in, I could see bees moving at the bottom of the frames. I’m not sure how they survived this or, indeed, whether they will survive. However, I’ve now stuffed the entrance with grass, leaving a little entrance gap and Joe built a snow wall in front of the hive to protect it from the worst of the wind. Fingers crossed we’ve caught it in time and done enough!

The hives at Archerfield are in a walled orchard and should be more protected from the worst of the wind. I’m not anticipating the entrance blocks to have been pushed back by the wind so there should be no damp snow encroaching into the hives. There may be some snow blocking the entrance but we’ll hopefully venture out at the weekend, when the roads are in a safer state, and can clear any snow then.